Entrepreneurs often have a tough time delegating effectively. After all, the company is their baby. They gave it life and steered it through its formative years. They know how to press all the important buttons and pull all the essential levers better than anyone else. But if they continue to refuse access to those buttons

“People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” ~ Thomas Sowell “Has anyone ever said, ‘I wish I could go to more meetings today?’” ~ Matt Mullenweg “Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.” ~ John Kenneth Galbraith I was going to say that meetings get a bad rap,

The Overture Group is an executive search firm with an additional specialty in compensation consulting. We recently heard a presentation by Bob Lindeman and Mark Reilly, both managing directors of that firm. They reminded us that compensation is (or should be) a strategic issue, not a simple, tactical, what-are-we-gonna-pay-this-person issue. And our strategy should consider

Setting priorities. That’s something many entrepreneurs struggle with. In fact, entrepreneurs are sometimes likened to crows who get distracted by every new shiny thing that comes along. Unfortunately, this creates confusion as employees try to keep up with ever-shifting priorities. In other cases, instead of setting priorities vertically with the most important at the top

Almost everything that gets done in business gets done by teams. Even the road warrior sales person who is out there, far from the office and hunting his next prey, needs the support of a sales team. Keynote speaker and best-selling business author, Patrick Lencioni, talks extensively about teams in his book, “The Ideal Team

We have used this space to talk about leadership many times in the past, and no doubt, will continue to talk about it in the future. It is, after all, a critically important topic. If you go to the business section of a bookstore or a library, you’ll find the shelves are packed with books

During the Great Recession, hiring was not much of a problem because most companies weren’t doing any of it. Some imposed a hiring freeze, others laid people off. Now we have the opposite problem: companies want to hire but can’t find the people they want. Best-selling business author Jim Collins uses the analogy of a

Every year, in its September issue, Inc. magazine publishes its “Inc. 5000” annual ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America. Two years ago, when the Inc. 5000 list for 2015 came out, we extracted some of the highlights in an attempt to learn what characteristics all these entrepreneurs have in common that make them

Working more hours does not make us more productive. That seems counter-intuitive, but it’s true. This was demonstrated by many studies conducted from the early 1900s to the 1950s. In fact, Henry Ford, who was an early adopter of working fewer hours, reduced the work day in his plants from 10 hours to eight, and

In American business, an individual’s compensation package, particularly among managers and sales people, frequently includes an incentive component. An example might be a manager who is paid a base salary of $75,000, but is able to earn an additional $25,000 if he or she is able to achieve certain goals or outcomes. The proposition is,